Day 9 Keld to Baldersdale

 

We leave Keld Lodge very good accommodation and dropped back down into the village to meet where we left the path yesterday. The River is low but there is still some beautiful small waterfalls.

Then we have the inevitable uphill client to start the day of Kiston Hill. We look back at Keld

This leaves up to Stonesdale moor where the track is quite thin but not too difficult to follow we can see in the distance nine standards rig but too far away to photograph this track goes on for about 4 1/2 miles

before we can see the iconic Tanhill in the highest pub in Britain. We are Halfway of our challenge here.

Typical was too early for alcoholic drink, but just had to pop inside to have a look , very peaceful and homely place from Tan Hill we have very boggy indistinct paths to follow. We’ve been warned about those more and it’s extreme Boggs luckily it wasn’t too difficult to pass due to the dryer whether we’ve had recently we have to follow Posts to try and navigate through as the path is very difficult to see

 occasionally the path improves the stream because it drains into the river called fuming beck now going through  Sleightholme Moor walking is level and fairly easy-going even though it’s still in a boggy area

continue on this path until we reach intake bridge which was actually the only place we could stop and sit for lunch

 from here it’s an easy track then pass a couple of fields included this bull

More Moorland eventually  leads to a place called Gods bridge close to what I think  is a lime kiln.

from here we have a bit of a climb which got us puffing and panting although it wasn’t far up to the road, we cross the A66 using an underpass tunnel  this was quite a relief because we did see from distance how busy the road was

here Hill climb through more moorland by this time we’ve got quite fed up  of moors as it was becoming a little bit repetitive so we were extremely relieved to see the  Blackton reservoir in the distance because we knew the end of our route was at Baldersdale by this reservoir ,

here was an amazing help yourself shop at Clove Lodge.  we were picked up from taken to Cotersdale for our accommodation. The Fox and Hounds Very nice meal and comfortable place to stay.

this is where our biggest disaster of the walk so far happened and Merlin developed a limp so we’ve had to make the very difficult decision for our eldest daughter Faith to collect Merlin to take him home with all a bit sad at this moment